Habits and Hustle - Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Are your hips stable, mobile, or neither? In this Fitness Friday episode on the Habits and Hustle podcast, I talk with Henry Abbott about his insights from elite sports training facilities that can help people prevent injuries and age better. We discuss simple tests you can do at home, why ACL tears are epidemic among female athletes, and the importance of plyometric training for developing "bouncy" strength. Henry also shares the 13-step warm-up routine used by elite athletes, which can transform how you feel in just 10 minutes.  Henry Abbott is an award-winning journalist and founder of TrueHoop, a respected basketball media platform. He previously led ESPN's 60-person NBA digital and print team, which published several groundbreaking articles and won a National Magazine Award. His new book "Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance" explores revolutionary approaches to injury prevention through the science of ballistic movements.  What we discuss:  Hip mobility vs. stability - everyone fits one category Self-tests: pigeon pose and side plank X Mobile hips need strength, stable hips need yoga ACL tears 8x more common in female athletes True causes of ACL injuries Importance of plyometric training Landing mechanics and hip control 13-step warm-up routine Strategies for aging well through hip health Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off  TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers.  Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here, code Jennifer20 for 20% off.  Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off DavidProtein: Try David today—buy 4, get the 5th free at davidprotein.com/habitsandhustle To learn more about Henry Abbott:  Website: https://www.henryabbott.com/  https://www.truehoop.com/  X: https://x.com/truehoop?lang=en  Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Today on Habits and Hustle Fitness Friday, I'm joined by Henry Abbott. He's an award-winning journalist and founder of True Hoop. Henry spent years at ESPN before launching True Hoop, where he built a powerful platform that dives deep into the NBA, business and the hidden forces shaping pro sports. But in today's episode we talk all about Misogi, a practice where you take on a challenge so intense you've only got a 50% chance of finishing. We talk wild examples like underwater 5k's with rocks and paddle boarding through shark infested waters all designed

to push the limits of what you think you're capable of. We also talk about science-backed insights from Harvard's Fatigue Lab, plus his own story of overcoming chronic pain through movement, proving that sometimes the boldest path leads to real transformation. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsor, Momentous. When your goal is healthspan, living better and longer, there are very few non-negotiables. One of them? Quality. And when it comes to supplements designed for high performers, nobody does it better than Momentus. Momentus goes all in on NSF certification,

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go to livemomentous.com and use code GEN for 20% off. Just act now, start today. GEN for 20% off. Just act now. Start today. Jen for 20% off. Live momentous.com. We all have weird stuff with our hips. Like every single person. Oh, terrible. I mean, that's where my biggest issue is.

Yeah. And so it plays in that space too. It does? Yeah, cause so if plays in that space too. It does? Yeah. So if you think about the egg again, right? And so now you're this free-falling egg and ideally you're going to be bouncy because of like a rubber band of your glutes, right? Right.

This is practicing kind of getting the force there, if that makes sense. Okay. It's just, you know, again, the nerves are going to control all your... There's 600 muscles in the body and they're controlled by the brain basically. It's going to like teach them to like get it snappier, better, right? So every single person they assess at P3 has had hip issues basically. But they fit in one or the other category. This is probably the most important thing I will tell you today. Okay, good. So I should listen. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So everybody's hips are either unstable or immobile and you should know which group you're good. So I should listen. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So everybody's hips are either

unstable or immobile and you should know which group you're in and I can tell you how to find out. So actually I asked Marcus at one point I'm like, well, how do I know if my hips are immobile? And he's like, I think you know. That's hilarious. But just in case you don't like the way you check that one would be to get into like a pigeon or you know, pigeon from yoga or do you know standing figure four? I don't really want to demonstrate it, but like, okay, so standing figure four. So you stand up and then I would take like my right ankle and cross it over my left knee and then sit down. Yep.

Right? While you're bouncing on one leg and you know, butt back, chest up and you want to kind of bounce. If you can really sink into that position, or sink into a pigeon, and I think we all know if you're not sunk in, if you can sink in, then we're gonna say your hips are very likely mobile enough, right?

And then for stability, this one's a little hard. If you do a side plank, but the kind of side plank where your body's a complete X. So your leg is elevated, your arm is elevated, and then this is different than any other side plank I know, all 10 toes pointing forward. So your body's a big X. If you can lock that out and hold it,

then we're gonna say that your hips are stable enough. And what we find, what they find is that basically everyone who lifts weights should do yoga, and everyone who does yoga should lift weights, because basically the people with mobile hips make them more mobile with yoga, right? And people with stable heads make them more mobile with weightlifting, but they should switch, right? Because the people with stable hips need to work on mobility, right?

And people with mobile hips need to work on stability. Either one could get you needing a hip replacement, right? You want to have a bit of both. So that's interesting. So and you need to be both, right? We need both. little bit of both. Wow, so that's interesting. So, and you need to be both, right? We need both, we all need both. You need stability and mobility. This is how we're gonna age well, yeah.

And that's so important for aging. So let me just repeat that because I think that's really important. So to age well, for your body to age well, we need to have hips that are stable and mobile. Totally. Right? And the way to check that is to either go into a standing figure four to see if you can

sit down, right. Or the pigeon, right. And you'll know if you're mobile or not. And if whatever, and the side plank with your handout, fingers open. And leg up. And leg up. That in itself is very hard.

It's so hard. Yeah in itself is very hard. It's so hard. Yeah, that's really hard. This is like 5% of people who are going to pass this test, I think. Right. So then let's just say 5% of people have passed. Then what does the other 95% of people do? So I think if you...

So you need work on hip stability. And it's very knowable, right? I guarantee that within a mile of here are 10 trainers who know how to help you with that. If that's what you're working on, right? Now you have a target, right? You can do it on YouTube probably, but you want someone to have eyes on you. But let me just finish that, because whatever, if you cannot do that, right?

If you're unable to sink into the figure eight, or sorry, the pigeon, that means you're immobile, and that means you should be doing less weights, more yoga. And if you are able to do that, but your lips, not lips, your hips are unstable, you know that by doing the plank. Yeah, exactly right. Because what happens? You just can't lift your leg or what happens?

Oh, what happens to me is I just feel weak. Right, you just can't get up, you can't do it, right? I can like, I can, I can cheat it. And then what, do you need more weights then? Or do you need more? Yeah, so you're tweaking your can't do it, right? I can like, I can cheat it. And then what, do you need more weights then? Or do you need more? Yeah, so you're tweaking your routine a little bit, right? I think you, you know, whatever you're doing to workout, I think a lot of us, you know, when you're 25,

you can do it all wrong and it's fine, right? No, but what I mean is if you're in that side plane, how do you know if you're stable or mobile or whatever? You're gonna be shaking or collapsing or quitting, you know? So if you're unstable, then you go to do the yoga or the weights? Then you go do the weights. Yeah, the weights. You need to be more strong.

Yeah, you're going to be squatting. I've always had immobile hips. Not my wife's family, but everyone in my blood relatives, we are the immobile hip crowd. Right. That's very common for guys though. Oh, totally. We're cool like that. Right. But I think mostly women maybe have more mobility in their hips and men have less.

Yeah. I mean, there are women who have immobile hips for sure and there are men who have mobile hips. But like, yeah, you're right. That's definitely mobility is more likely in women for sure. And so I always thought of very mobile hips as just like way better, right? Like the yoga teacher, I'd be like, oh man, like she's gonna live forever with this, right? Right. But only from this project that I learned like, no, like a lot of super mobile people need hip replacements because they just don't have the musculature to keep it together, right? Yeah.

Think about how we're talking about, oh, here's the thing I learned that blew my mind. In my assessment when they assessed me, I mentioned you're standing on a box and you step off and land on the force plate. Well, when I stepped off, my hips like dipped, right? The foot that's out over the space, that hip just fell. And they stopped the video and they're like, why are you doing that?

I'm like, I don't know. I just thought that was what we do, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not what we do. Like you're supposed to keep your hips level, right? It's supposed to be like when you do most exercises, like the glute on the standing leg should be engaged and it's supposed to hold that stuff together, right?

And then the other one can be mobile and bouncy, right? But you're supposed to control your hips. I was walking around without good control of my hips. And I feel like that's what happens to a lot of these elite yoga athletes is that they're, you know, if they were running down that mountain path or whatever, their hips are going to be too flexible. Flopping around. Well, I think it's because you could be too mobile. It's like the Goldilocks thing,

right? With anything, right? You could be too much. It's like you have to be just enough. Just enough stability, just enough mobility, or else if you're too mobile, you can also injure yourself. This is what I've learned recently, yep. Is it just weights or yoga? Like, it's, because I find like, you know, people who do weights are much more stiff, right, versus people who do more malleable stuff like yoga.

So getting back to my first question then, what is the top injury for women and what is the top injury for men? I don't honestly know the answer to that. I know that this ACL thing is ridiculous rates in female athletes, right? It's 8x men. And so I'm a little bit of a women's soccer fan. And I don't know if you know Emma Hayes is

the new coach of the US national team. There's 11 players on the team and she's getting a crew of 50 ready for the World Cup because you can't count on. Wow. There's just so many. Since she got the job just recently, one of their star defender is out for a year with ACL tear. There are several out now. I think there are three players out right now.

In the last Women's World Cup or in the Olympics, every single team had a player out because of ACL tear. It's just like rampant. For women. For women. And not, I mean, Kobe Bryant got that. I mean, like for men, like there's a lot of it for men too, right, but just for women, it's just way more.

Is it because they're more, again, is it because women, not just hips are more mobile, but maybe their ankles are more mobile, so there's more chance of that injury, no? Yeah, I mean, these are very active questions in science right now. There's a bunch of theories. You know, there could be hormonal explanations.

Could be women have wider hips, which permits their knees. There's like this thought that if your knees go in together as you bend your knees, that is an elevated risk of ACL tear. There were so many theories on women have narrower ACLs. There's all these theories, but I'm a little bit struck by, so in this granular movement data that my book is about, they did a massive study of every single thing that goes into NBA players who had ACL tears over years.

Basically, so if someone has an ACL tear, then they go back and look at that person's husband and say, how do they move? And by this analysis, it's none of those things I just described. Like, ACL tears are caused by landing on the outside of your foot and having the weight roll to the inside. Like, your shin bone is moving like a big windshield wiper, right? That's number, cause number one. Is that more common in women? We haven't studied that yet, right? But I think that would be tip top thing to study, right?

Yeah, you would think. And then the second biggest cause is femoral rotation. So this is where, you know, this is gross, but you go with my analogy. You know when you have the Thanksgiving turkey and you like twist the leg off Yeah, well, I'm using my arm I guess the upper half of your leg if some people when they squat down your upper leg bone twists

Inside your leg and you can imagine that would be extremely Stressful like on the on the on your ligaments in your knee, right? So the first problem is managed by stronger muscles in the lower leg, like we've been talking about, right? The second problem is managed by stronger muscles in your hip, like your hip has, that bone in your upper leg has little knobs on it, and there are muscles that like grab it

and hold it in place and keep it from rotating, and you can just strengthen those muscles and make it stronger. And you do that with all sorts of difficult work like side planks. But this is why yoga teachers are more prone to some of these problems, right? Because they're very flexible and you kind of want to be rigid in that particular way. So I think this would be the first place to start for me if I were talking about like leading injuries for women, right, is these two things have been studied in men and they have not been studied in women.

They're kind of- That's so weird. Yeah. So the way men, like P3 is an expensive place for professional athletes to go and mostly like Adidas pays for them to go or their agency or TSA. How much is it? I don't honestly know. It depends.

Like right now, there's NBA players going there before the draft for seven weeks. So that's going to be a lot. I went for three days, right? That's going to be a four-figure number, right? But they just started having just in the last year or two. The time I was writing the book, Ileah Boston was the number one WNBA overall draft pick and Haley Jones was like, I think the sixth pick. They were there.

They're the first time that the shoe company paid for women basketball players to go. Right? Wow. And so there've been a bunch of women through there, but it's only 15% of the thousands of athletes they've had. So, you know, the industry didn't fund that before, right? But it's starting to. And so I think I'm trying to find ways that they could just assess like

a thousand soccer players at once just to get a big data set to start answering these questions. I think that's what the future will look like. I think it's important that a lot, you know, without this data set, we're looking at all these things like ligament width and it's not likely the cause, I don't think. Let's quickly talk about a health issue that affects almost all of us. Fiber deficiency. Did you know that 95% of people don't get enough fiber in their daily diet? I was shocked when I learned this because fiber is truly

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Grab it today. So then how do we train for that not to happen? How do we train so we don't get ACL injuries? Like so far, what I've gotten from you was we need to strengthen our lower legs and plyometrics is super important from all different planes, side to side as powerful and as healthy as we age? So one of the answers you won't like and one of them you will, I think. Okay, I like that. The one that you won't like is that they were going to come soon to a point where there

will be some way to like assess your own biomechanics, right? Like you want to do a workout that's designed for you. When they put the exercise on the board and everybody does the same workout, it's like you want someone with expert eyes looking at your body. And they're saying, oh, and what happens now is you get hurt first, and then you go to physical therapy,

and then it's customized for you. 100%. I always have this problem with trainers. They're like, OK, grab the heaviest weight and squat deep down. And like, I'm like, my body mechanics doesn't allow for me to do that move. They're like, yeah, that's impossible. I'm like, no, it's not impossible. I will hurt myself. And like people should, people know their bodies better than like a stranger does. And so when they do these generic workouts and think everybody's body can move a certain way, that's just not accurate, right?

Yes, 100%. And it's a little sad to me, I was doing PT for a while at this place where they had a track and all the sports equipment, because I think the idea was they'd have these elite athletes being explosive in there. But everybody in there is so broken, they never used the track, right?

Of course, that's right. It's exactly like you're starting at like 100, you know what I mean? And so that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about for the average person, someone who's more intermediate or beginner or whatever in that realm, not a professional athlete, right? Because not all of us are going to have the chance to go to P3 and like get these crazy, you know, assessments and then like work that way. But from all of the experience you've had, I want you to be able to tell me and my audience, what we can do to strengthen our bodies in the

ways that are the most beneficial in the ways that we get hurt the most in the ACL. Another one is glutes don't fire really. You know, that's a big one. Hip issues, knee issues. Give me some stuff that everyday people can do daily. Yeah. So there are 25 illustrations in the book of like, because I was like, they're obsessed with elite athletes there, right? And they will tell you they're like, Henry was so annoying with asking me so many questions about like the rest of us. I know. And they're athletes there, right? And they will tell you, they're like, Henry was so annoying with asking me so many questions about like the rest of us.

I know. And they're not interested, right? Okay, they won't say this, they won't admit this, but like they call us normies. Yeah. What do we do with normies? Yeah, I'm a normie and so are you, so yes. I'm a little normie.

So I tried to capture as many of the things as I could. And writing about it is a little bit tricky because you really need to see what you're supposed to do. For instance, their warm up is amazing. There are days where I got up and felt like the Tin Man. And I'm 50 and I would go downstairs and be like, oh my gosh, I think I broke something. But I would just do the warm up. It's 13 steps. I have them memorized. You can do it in, I don't know, 10 minutes. And it's a little bouncy and it's got a little bit of stuff that you don't normally have. And now I've noticed actually at different races or whatever,

I'm like, oh, that person's doing the P3 warmup. Like, there's a little cult that we're in now. Really? OK, what's the warmup? I want to know. So there's a picture. Every single step is illustrated in there. But you know, it's walking. You go back and forth at the gym a bunch of times. And first you're walking on your heels,

then you're slapping your toes down down and then you're doing two different, no, three different kinds of lunges. Is that standing figure four thing? You've probably done the thing a bunch of times where you put your hand on the wall and swing your leg like a hamstring stretch. Then you're on the floor for a bit rotating your spine various ways. There's a lot of rotation, tons of rotation in all of their recommendations. Why?

Because that's another neurological training. This is a mind blowing thing. There's nobody in Major League Baseball who didn't grow up playing baseball. Basketball is full of players who didn't grow up playing baseball, but because baseball is hitting and throwing, which are both rotating things, and if you didn't grow up practicing, you're not as good as people who did like just And so a lot of us like I didn't grow up with any I didn't play any baseball. You're 100% right about that Go on. But I anyway you want to rotate you you want this is gonna be part of aging well, right?

You want to do things that rotate?